This presentation focuses on purposeful play and the place of languages and cultures in the French pre-school classroom; the languages and cultures of the children, and those which are already present or welcomed into the learning environment. In France, three years of pre-school are obligatory for all children. From a linguistic and cultural perspective, this pupil population is increasingly heterogeneous. More and more children start pre-school with only partial or zero knowledge of French (the language of schooling), and many other children, perhaps already at ease with the French language, use one or more other languages within their home and/or community environments. As a consequence, a growing number of children have to navigate between different linguistic and cultural worlds from a very young age. How does this effect their education? And what can schools do to accompany children in the process of building a plural identity which encourages them to use all of their linguistic and cultural resources as tools for success in the learning environment?

Within the world of research, few people nowadays question the links between language, culture and identity, but how far has this knowledge been appropriated by pre-school teachers in France? The national curriculum presents a relatively positive vision of languages. The idea that languages cross-fertilise one another, and that exploring languages generally can help with the acquisition of French is explicitly expressed in official documents. Throughout their three years in pre-school, all pupils are supposed to have language awareness classes, and the education department has published teacher-friendly resources (most recently (2021) a guide for teaching language awareness courses in pre-school) designed to help teachers encourage their pupils to explore languages in a playful way.

Working with purposeful play at pre-school seems like a promising tool for creating continuities and reducing ruptures between home and school for plurilingual and pluricultural children. Purposeful play to some extent acts as a mediator between free play, (predominantly linked to the home environment in France), and structured learning, (the domain of school); how far then can playing with languages serve the same role? Can using the natural curiosity for languages of 3 to 5 year old children, be used as a tool to encourage them to play with languages and promote inclusion?

This presentation looks at the specific difficulties of plurilingual and pluricultural children as they enter the school system and how the stress of encountering an unexpected mismatch between the home and school environments impacts school maturity, readiness for learning, narrative development and early literacy skills. It goes on to analyse a selection of teaching materials promoted by the department of education, and investigates the extent to which these materials provide teachers with the support necessary for introducing “playing with languages” into their classrooms; purposeful play with the aim of consciously encouraging children to develop open, positive attitudes to linguistic and cultural plurality – both their own and that of the other.

Keywords: Inclusion, linguistic and cultural diversity, pre-school, purposeful play.